I know your heart and you, mine

During the buildup to the fight between the Uchiha brothers, Itachi says something which stuck with me, probably because I study philosophy and it was overtly philosophical but that's neither here nor there.

Itachi's words are as follows: "Each of us lives, dependent and bound by our individual knowledge and our awareness...All that, is what we call reality...However, both knowledge and awareness are equivocal..Ones reality might be another's illusion, we all live inside our own fantasies."

I just think this is such a fantastic character choice because it's using Itachi's view on perception, and thus knowledge in order to tell us about his character.

Given that he thinks perception is a good source of knowledge we can roughly infer that he is some sort of empiricist, we are able to gain knowledge about the world by experiencing it using the five senses is one way of wording such a view.

Another implication of this quote is that we can ONLY gain any worthwhile knowledge from these experiences, and this all culminates in an understanding of the universe which is then called reality.

Now the thing that really interests me is that he seems to be some sort of anti-realist about truth, talking about how each individual has their own reality constructed from their individual experiences.

He isn't empiricist - he outright mocks viewing world by what you experience alone, because that's how manipulations and propaganda works. That's how he constructs the perfect fantasy Sasuke is supposed to live in and it's only knowledge he's never supposed to actually gain that would tell him the full story.

For me Itachi is cynical. He doesn't defend the system because he thinks it's good - he sees exactly how broken and rotten he is, he just doesn't see a better alternative. All he sees beside it is war. Uchiha might see their coup as righteous revenge for years of oppression, but villagers will see it as violence destroying their peaceful lives - and both sides are right. Both live their own 'reality'.

1- in the Chunin exams when all the odds “forced” him to train Sasuke and leave Naruto everyone accused him of favoring Sasuke and not caring about Naruto ignoring all the logical reasons..

1- Sasuke was going to face the most dangerous opponent who was so thirsty to kill him (Gaara) so it was Kakashi's responsibility to teach him something so strong to defend himself with while Naruto's opponent was Neji, someone from the same village and not remotely dangerous like Gaara.

2- Sasuke was being chased by a creepy snake sanin and his gang trying to possess his body.

3- Sasuke had an uncontrollable curse mark that not only put him in more danger, it also drew him further into Orochimaru's trap that had to be observed, contained and needed a strong will and motive to be controlled.

4- Kakashi was the only one who can actually teach Sasuke inside the village since he is the only one with a Sharingan and lighting Chakra Nature affinity just like Sasuke.

5- and this is one of the most important reasons, it was Jiraiya's request to focus on Sasuke and leave Naruto to him as we've seen later on a flashback

6- Ebisu was a special Jounin, the 3rd Hokage considered him to be the best teacher and thus why he chose him to train his grandson but sadly he was always prejudged and was never given a chance to acually show what he can do as a teacher, so Kakashi didn't even abandon Naruto at all.

7- Kakashi went through a lot of trauma with his old team and he vowed to never let his new team to have the same fate as his old team so it was a top priority to him to save one of his team members from getting killed or kidnapped, it's like Kakashi's worst nightmare becoming reality all over again.

2- he was a very exceptional shinobi since he was very young (the youngest Genin ever at 5, the youngest Chunin ever at 6, the youngest Jounin at 9) and was already following his father's steps who Minato stated that he was stronger than the 3 Sannin without a Sharingan or any kind of Dojutsu and yet people keeps claiming that he is nothing without the Sharingan.

3- As I mentioned above while Kakashi was the youngest Genin ever at 5, Minato became Genin at 10 and Itachi at 7… and while Kakashi became Chunin at 6, Minato became Chunin at 11 and Itachi at 10 yet people claim that Itachi and Minato were smarter than him just because they had the top scores in the written part of the Chunin exam, the exam that he took when he was 5 years younger than Minato and 4 years younger than Itachi, give him that same exam when he is as old as them then we can talk and yet his score wasn't even far behind them.

4- he invents his own A-Rank Jutsu at the age of 9, people claims that he didn't and Indra did because of a filler episode that Indra used something similar to Chidori, ignoring every canon statement saying that it's Kakashi's original Jutsu

5- whenever he does something exceptional that proves how badass he is people claim that he copied it with the Sharingan:

he uses all 5 chakra natures, they say he copied it with the Sharingan even tho the Sharingan can't even copy Chakra Nature

He learns Rasengan before getting the Sharingan, they say he copied it with the Sharingan, HOW? how is he supposed to copy something with the Sharingan when he had no Sharingan?! And Rasengan can't even be copied with the Sharingan

He summons a perfect Susanoo that also can't be copied with the Sharingan, they say he copied sasuke's Susanoo with the Sharingan 🤦🏻‍♀️

He opens a gate that also can't be copied with the Sharingan, they say he copied it with the Sharingan

The Sharingan can only copy movements and hand signs, not everything.

6- in every debade they downplay him by comparing situations from the end of Shippuden to his version from the first season of Naruto or early Shippuden completely ignoring his development and other feats from mid Shippuden and the end of Shippuden.

7- once he lost the Sharingan everyone automatically assumed that he became weak ignoring all of his history and all of his abilities even tho it was officially stated in the canon novel “Kakashi Retsuden” that Kakashi now without the Sharingan is a lot more stronger than his war arc version with one Sharingan after he trained, learned so many new powerful Jutsus, increased his Chakra reserves significantly plus losing the Chakra drain the Sharingan caused him, invented more powerful Jutsus and made up for the loss of the Sharingan, still has his 1000 Jutsu and still a genius, they don't even try to gather information and look things up and continue the story then judge no, they just assume without even trying to know any facts.

8- he stays a Hokage for about 13 years and does magnificent things as it was mentioned Kakashi Retsuden:

The Fire Nation in Kakashi's reign witnessed a huge development in every aspect, architecture, technology (smartphones, computers, internet, trains… ) and economy.

He invented a system to keep the peace between the nations by exchanging goods, technology and inventions… etc, this system made all nations in constant need of each other instead of fighting each other which resulted in making the fire country the richest in history of all the 5 nations.

He helped Sakura open the first mental health clinic.

He got rid of the Root organization and all the corruption in the Shinobi system that used to truly create all the conflict and wars. Yet still people call him the worst Hokage and claiming that he did nothing as the Hokage.

Kakashi wasn’t having it with zabuza

in looooove with this concept, i have like 6 more sketches for this that i'll finish later >:3